Getting out of tricky situations isn't easy. But along the way, I get to hang out with princesses (they never wear their crowns), camel jockeys (literally!) and famous (well at least quasi-famous) people...all for the love of media.

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Thursday, August 25, 2016

Dissed By a Screen Legend...

Feeling like a Neanderthal today.

Okay so where am I?

Current mood says I am lost in my own mind. I'm in a bit of a funk with this Clio Awards shortlist announcement staring me in my face. Scroll down. Scroll up. Scroll sideways. Nothing but the giants of advertising there. Not a Media Guy campaign to be found. My single entry was not selected.

Ugh.

I imagine this is what Angelina Jolie felt like in early 2015 when the Academy Awards were announced and she wasn't nominated for Unbroken. I guess it would be easy to flick this away attributing the slight to the old adage that David loses to Goliath 99% of the time. I mean look at who was nominated:

There are others on the shortlist too. Shoot, even the smaller names are big names in the real world.

"Wait till next year!" was the rallying cry...mine too.

I spent two days telling myself in true loser rationalization, "Wait till next year!" In the 1940s and '50s, the Brooklyn Dodgers (no David by any means) could never win it all Most often they would lose to their cross-town rivals, the hated Giants or the hated Yankees. The rallying cry was "Wait till next year!" Then in 1955, it was next year. The Brooklyn Dodgers finally won it all. Then they broke the hearts of Brooklynites and moved their beloved team to Los Angeles. Yet, I digress...

It's been a really great month I have to say. My Media Guy Struggles pilot is getting noticed and all, but it doesn't hide the fact that my bid to win my first Clio since 1999 was snuffed out. Denied. A stomach punch of sorts. Happy hour starts early today, I suppose.

So here it is, #ThrowbackThursday, and all of this reminded me of the time when a screen legend dissed me in the wildest way possible...

...The announcement took me back to those regular Secret Life of Walter Mitty moments to that time I was at a cocktail party with King Kong and I’m telling him about how much I loved his work on top

Being dissed by King Kong was a stomach punch.

of the Empire State Building and the Twin Towers and asking how he feels about working with leading ladies Fay Wray, Jessica Lange and Naomi Watts. And I'm waiting for his answer and he's giving me this growling stare but finally he breaks the silence and says, "I like them as long as they are blonde, but what you should have asked is if I thought Peter Jackson brought his A-game or not to the last movie and if he could gotten more out of my performance." And I instantly start perspiring and going back into the dark place in my mind wondering how I could've screwed up meeting a screen legend on the scale of Kong himself and after what seems like a lifetime he bursts into laughter and says, "Relax, I’m screwing with your simple homo sapiens mind." And I start laughing as well. Louder and louder, like I never laughed before - in part out of pure relief - and both of us wind up giggling like schoolgirls for what feels like a solid ten minutes. Finally after we catch our breath he says to me, "Why don't we go raid the bar in the misses private room and you show me what you can do with that opposable thumb." And I'm like, "You're still messing with me, right?" And he's like, "I'm serious as planes shooting monkeys from the sky." So I kind of wring my hands a bit and tell him, "Kong, I'm not really comfortable with..." Then he goes stone cold, staring off into the distance, and says, "You tell anyone about this and not a single effing soul will believe you." And without making eye contact he spits his jawbreaker into my drink and walks away. And I'm all, "Holy crap! King Kong sucks on jawbreakers?"